Eternalcowboy22

Join Date 04/2006

You're surrendering to the Terrans? Really?

The spite of the Drengin

So after I updated to 1.1 I excitedly started a new game. I start out in an area that is somewhat spare in planets with not too many higher quality ones, but after a little while I find a lot of planets worth going after. I also started out near the Drengin, as in our homeworlds were three or four sectors away on a gigantic map. I managed to not only get almost all of the good worlds in the area, but to completely surround the Drengin in the process. I started working on culturally converting his worlds and several were quickly in danger of falling to me (a couple without any starbases simply because there were several high quality planets nearby). The Drengin, seeing me as a strategic threat to their hopes for empire took a look at my military strength and noticed that I didn't have any (does the AI take into account what tehnology opponents have when judging their strength? I didn't have hardly any weapons tech either but it seems like tech is an important factor). So they decided to declare war. I bought the Stinger III from one of the other races and made a small ship i called the Emergency Missile Fighter and started making them on every nearby planet. I also researched the invasion line very quickly and started building transports. As my new fleets and transports headed for Dregin space, three of their outlying worlds fell to me due to culture. WIthin a few weeks I had taken two of their worlds, wiped out their defences and was preparing for the invasion of their last few worlds (they were down to five).

Suddenly, I get a message from the Drengin saying that they don't want me to have their worlds and so, apparently out of spite, they surrender to the Terrans of all people. I almost didn't believe it. The Terrans? I thought they were mortal enemies. This is the first game where I've really been able to dominate militarily (I usually do it culturally). Do races often surrender their planets to other races out of spite? Or a lot of spite in my case?

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While I've not experienced it personally..... yes. It is supposedly very common for races to surrender to someone else out of spite.

throw up some ISB's and convert them anyway!

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I had a recent game where one of my close friends - I forget which race - was faring very poorly in a war. They decided that rather than lose outright, they wanted for their worlds to be placed in the care of their strongest friends - so they turned over all of their planets to me. That was a pleasant surprise indeed!

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This is a common occurance, there is a formula the AI uses to determine when they will surrender their worlds and to whom. I don't know whether historical enemy is part of that calculation or not

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One thing I've noticed is that races will sometimes surrender not to the leader but to whomever is the greatest threat to the leader (i.e., the second or third place). This tendency seems to override any "story-based" concerns (i.e., if you're the leader and the Drengin are your greatest rival, the Torians are much more likely to surrender to the Drengin than to you - even though they supposedly hate the Drengin because of their past enslavement).

On a completely unproveable but related note, AI races also seem more likely to surrender to races that I'm gearing up to conquer next. Come on, stop making me work for it!

I like the surrender mechanic as implemented in the game - it encourages you to think through and plan your assaults well in advance, and consolidates power into the hands of several powerful races to stave off simplistic "divide and conquer" strategies (you can still divide and conquer, but you have to be somewhat careful about it).

Oh, one thing I've also noticed is that sometimes one hopeless race will surrender to a near-hopeless race and create a fairly viable, reasonably powerful race from the remains. In one game, the Terrans were in a stalemate with the Drengin (thanks to a small supply of assault ships from me, of course). They had 7 planets (large galaxy, habitable planets common - the three "big" races all had 10 or 11). Then the Thalans surrendered their 5 planets to the Terrans and a little while later the "big three" had become the "big four." Nice.

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I often experienced this issue in GC1 before, and I appreciated it very much. Either the attacked party (considering I was the offender) offered their last planet to their best friends, the strongest civilization but mine, or they gave it to their brothers in mind (either good, neutral or evil civs). Since this issue could force you to totally change your strategy at sudden, I appreciate this impressing feature - especially on small or tiny maps with few colonizable planets.

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Kazriko

Join Date 07/2004

+10

Heh, I tend to be somewhat vengeful on races that do this. Towards the endgame I had culturally squished everyone but the Arceans and Torians. The arceans had a cluster in one corner and the Torians had one in another corner. I had combat ships near both clusters and wiped out the torian's entire navy. When they surrendered to the arceans I declared war on them, took all the former Torian worlds by force (killing their entire population) then slaughtered the Arcean's navy and they finally surrendered to me.

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since each game begins with first contact, there is no "historical enemy" unless they faught in that game. Since you seemed to be the "historical enemy" it's likely the Terrans were either neutral or even on friendly terms.

Each new game doesn't necessarily play out according to the Stardock imposed lore

But yes, I've seen the spite surrender a few times as well as surrendering to the might of the aggressor

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I wonder if your good/evil alignment has any effect on whether or not other civs surrender to the player?

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i have to say this but even though i don't know what fomula the comp uses to make the rankings its messed up. thi has happened to me. i was the only race with weapon techand combat ships so i went to war and guess what it said someone else had a stronger military than me

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Yes and no. The good guys have that one improvement that suppose to get races to surrender to you. Hall of Empathy.

Other than that I'm not sure how align plays into surrenders.

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Ironic epilogue to the demise of the Drengin in my game: they did it to keep the worlds out of my hands, but in doing so, they surrendered to a culturally weaker civilization, which is causing their planets to put out about half their former influence; the worlds are falling to my culture now. Take that Lord Kona!

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I think I would have to say Torians and Dreigen are historical enemies, as well as Iconians and Yor and the Drath and Altarians. Most races in the game have their hated enemies which I think should play a bigger factor in the game its self.

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the Drath and Altarians

Actually, if you play as the Drath you see that they've forgiven the Altarians and have no grudge against them anymore. This is also a reason why they were made good aligned (same as Altarians) in the latest patch.

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I'm in a game where the Terrans and Arceans are near each other and I'm fairly close to them. I've been eyeing the Terran's planets, but the Arceans got the jump on them and took two planets. I quickly build up a few transports and sneak them in to take Earth and a couple other planets (Thanks to the Arcean's for wiping out any offenseive threat!) while my escort fleets catch up.

The Terrans now have a pq18 and a pq 13 planet left, but farther away. As I approach to finish them off, they surrender to the Arceans...the ones that started conquering them in the first place!

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I'm sure the surrendering thing is in large scale something completely random. In my last game the Korx were the ultimate race, controling around a fourth of the galaxy out of 7 players and having twice the army he's nearest competer (me) had. Whatever, by chance I saved the game just before my friends, the torians ( I had close relations with them) surrendered to me. Juhuu! cool!- unfortunately the game crashed at this moment. When I reloaded my game the torians surrendered-as before- the following turn, but this time to their greatest enemy, the Korx. That really pissed me off so I reloaded the game a couple of times until the torians surrendered to me again. It needed about 10 reloads for that to happen, within these 10 reloads the torians surrendered once to me, twice to the Iconians and the rest of the times to the Korx.
My conclusion after this event: to whom a race surrenders is completely random, for some reasons certain races have bigger chances.
How ever surrendering really works, I don't like it because making any prognosis to whom a race surrenders seems absolutely impossible. It sometimes happens that your opponent gives all his remainings to a close friend of yours, that just cant be man.....

This is a strategy game and not poker......

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